We begin with Ann Druyan, widow of Carl Sagan, with a story about the Voyager expedition, true love, and a golden record that travels through space. And astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson explains the Coepernican Principle, and just how insignificant we are.

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Star gazing, it’s hard not to feel small...and lonely. Maybe that’s why it’s so irresistible to look out into all that darkness and see our own reflection staring us back, like Narcissus gazing into the pool. On this episode of Radiolab, we reflect on our romance with, projections upon, and ...

And now an uglier, less twinkly side of the little stars. First up, aliens. Despite our endless fascination with them, Tim Ferris, author of Coming of Age in the Milky Way , will tell us how unlikely it is that we'll ever encounter life in the universe. There's ...

How DO you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Finally we take a look at some people who are trying to reconcile the romantic and cynical perceptions of space by taking matters into their own hands. First, we'll hear about artist Dario Robleto's attempt to finish the lost Space ...

Comments [52]

Bryan
from Kansas City

You say those early pioneers died alone, and didn't have television crews watching them, but I'd argue the tale of the Donner Party is a well-known and sensational story of the dangers and tragedy of pioneering, just as Lewis and Clark is a celebrated tale. Their stories are told - maybe not with a camera or microphone - but they are told.

Ok, so this is kind of related to this epsiode of radiolab, I just this morning discovered a beautiful song by an artist called "Will Wagner" about the dog "Laika", the first animal sent into space at a time when no-one was sure of the effects of space travel on living organisms. I think anyone captivated by space travel and exploration would love this song, the message contained within it and the reminder that we should thank all human and non-human explorers of the cosmos.

Although a light-year is already a long way, there is a temptation to emphasize vastness and unfamiliar scale by using “gazzilion” and so on. My mother liked “umpteen”.

When talking about actual, identifiable objects, however, an off-hand exaggeration such as Mr Abumrad’s “fifty million light-years” for the distance to Albireo will either startle or confuse, as 2ndlaws noted two years ago. The Andromeda galaxy is only two-and-a-half million light-years distant; the diameter of the local group of fifty galaxies is only ten million light-years.

This segment has been rebroadcast at least once. The “fifty million” number really grates since _Radiolab_ tries very hard to artfully present a scientific understanding of the world to lay people.

A factor of a hundred thousand, even between friends, is liable to chafe.

Ken from Idaho is right in mentioning Dr deGrasse Tyson's gaffe, claiming that [terrestrial organisms] are made of constituent elements in (even rough) proportion to their prevalence in the matter we see in the universe.

Even accepting that he ignores the noble gasses (that make this a wildly false assertion) because they don't participate in chemical bonds, iron is somewhat more abundant in the universe than nitrogen but far less iron is in living things than nitrogen. Especially in vertebrates, calcium an phosphorous are more abundant in organisms than in the universe as a whole.

Re: Kevin from New Jersey is correct. The views expressed by Hamlet cannot be assumed to be Shakespeare's views. Let's look at Macbeth's Tomorrow and tomorrow... speech:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrowCreeps in this petty pace from day to dayto the last syllable of recorded time.And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more. It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and furySignifying nothing.

Pessimistic? Nihilistic is more like it, I think. But that doesn't mean Shakespeare viewed life in that way. It is Macbeth's speech, after all.

In discussing artists' view of our place in the universe, Robert Krulwich says "I think artists, Shakespeare for example, who says 'What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason' and all, it seems like it's art's job to say that we are special, significant, glorious . . . ." But these aren't Shakespeare's sentiments; they are part of a speech by Hamlet, one of the Shakespeare's most troubled protagonists, and Hamlet himself concludes the speech by saying "And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me . . . ."

My personal guess is that we're the only life form in our entire observable universe that has advanced to the point of building telescopes, so let's explore that hypothesis. It was the cosmic vastness that made me feel insignificant to start with. Yet those galaxies are visible and beautiful to us — and only us. It is only we who give them any meaning, making our small planet the most significant place in our observable universe.

The point is, we've taken a baby step or two to get mobile, which is a good idea, no matter what shortsighted earth-firsters think. We're an expansionist life form, which will naturally fill up any finite environment and choke itself out of existence. We should try harder, get some people out there mucking about for real, and give our progeny a fighting future chance, despite (or partly because of) the fact that we slightly increase the chances of encountering something that could destroy/save us. If putting out a PR story that Voyager has left the building again every few years helps re-focus the addled public mind, then I'm all for it. All rationality aside, though, some of us might have already beaten Voyager out of here in one way or another. Here's a song about a dream I had. Some dreams, I suspect, have elements of genetic memory: https://soundcloud.com/biff-thuringer/moonman-1

There was a time I also found it quite depressing to be a speck on a speck on a speck. Then I realized that the knowledge provided me with profound humanity. In my humility, I am the only caretaker of my life which happens to be a very improbable occurrence; I and nothing/no one else get to decide its meaning. To me, that is monumental.

You gotta love those "You're only saying we can't do it by taday's standards, there was a time when we though we wouldn't fly, wouldn't fly to the moon, wouldn't travel over 100Mph, etc". The sad fact is that during all those times of people not expecting particular barriers to be broken, all those doubts existed in a different type of scientific era. We not have a far clearer picture of physics, of mass-speed-energy problems but more importantly, we also know some actual physical barriers which come from demonstrated knowledge, not only speculation and doubt. Today when we speak of boundaries to science, we are able to say it with a great deal more confidence and reliability than they did in times when we were still trying to convert lead into gold.

Having said that, I hope the science is proved wrong within my lifetime. :)

Fact Check. I got really excited when one of the experts said the the "ingredients" in the human body and the "ingredients" in the universe lined up one for one...all the way down the list. I was hoping to use that fact in an article I am writing. Truth is...they don't line up in order. It's a neat thought...but that's all it is. A quick google search revealed it is not true.

Wonderful program. One question. What is the theme by 15:25 at the end of the segment with Philip Glass. I have heard bits of it on PBS advertising (that spot when people from different PBS programs are contributing to tell a kid a fairy tale).

Your discussion on space and time and the expanding universe was mind-opening and interesting, of course.

Far be it from me to suppose that I am smarter than Robert Krulwich, but I was disappointed in hearing you say that the likelihood of us discovering other civilized life in the universe is highly unlikely. I understand the math and scope of your reasoning, but you’re using a 21st century perspective that is limited to today’s knowledge.

If you could reach back in time and talk to Christopher Columbus and tell him that it would one day be possible to travel from the Old World to the New World in a matter of hours, he would have said, “That’s ridículo”. And if you attempted to describe computer technology, space travel and the Internet machine, he would have found that “muy increíble”.

It IS possible to travel to any part of the known and unknown universe. The secret lies in being in two places at once. I don’t know how it’s done, but God does it all the time. We need to figure out how He does it.

I have a question. In this episode ( Space Episode) I have heard ( for the second time in two days on NPR) the annoyance of one narrator making comments while having to faintly hear another voice in the background which is then potted up to listenable volume when that person is brought into the script. What idiot thought this up as a way to "announce" the fact that the next voice is about to be heard? That extrainious background noise is truly that - noise. It is distracting, unnecessary, and makes the otherwise splendid program less effective.PLEASE discontinue this practice. It is a distraction for intelligent people who want to hear your program straightforward without that nonsensical annoyance.

You think you've begun to scratch the surface of how small our conception of the universe is??? (that being the extrapolation you've been tracing, of how insignificant each of our conceptions of the universe has proven before)

You have not even begun to scratch the surface, because beneath the surface is "inner space" which equals or surpasses "outer space" in vastness, where every unit of organization you can find, like "a cell". A cell exists from the VIEW OF THE PARTS, as a *complete universe* unto itself beyond which the parts have no knowledge, and about which outsiders (ahem... "like us") are utterly unaware of as well.

What that means is that the problem of "how big is the universe" is a trick question. We've been asking "how big is the known universe", i.e. "how big is what we know", and we've now just proven that inner space makes the known universe a cell of internal relationships, knowable only from the perspective of its observers... "us".

There are other questions, but we still have to answer that one, to move to the next level of the gift we find all around and within us. It seems that in order to make the next steps, humans would need to recognize that we are still seeing the universe as centered on our own minds.

http://synapse9.com/signals to talk about the signals, messages in a bottle, that float by from other universes, as a way out of the trap... fyi

Loving this episode. Is there a place where I can find a list of all the music clips (particularly the world/ethnic music) during the short Philip Glass segment? They were wonderful and I would like to get them all! iTunes links, maybe??

This belief that significance is only determined by size and duration is one of the notable eccentricities of astrophysicists. We philosophers know it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for significance- that is to say, for anything to be something significant it must have at least some size and some duration but also other qualities. Keep on looking up.

The cliche that humans always put themselves at the centre of the universe, here regurgitated by Director of the Ball in the Box, ignores the fact that in the medieval worldview, the centre of the universe was where Hell was situated: thus the centre was the lowest rather than the highest place, and humans lived in the next to lowest place, the surface of the earth.

Loved this episode. Just don't forget about the relentless transformations of technology and knowledge when you think about space travel and the future. One of the hosts talked about global warming thousands of years from now and the "poof" of civilizations. Haha, doubtful. Can any of us even wrap our heads around life in the future?.

Fascinating episode! Every time I think about the Voyager crafts floating through space, I think about how crazy it would be if and when an advanced civilization intercepts the craft. How amazing would that be to receive?

I don't buy the theory that we don't want to go to space because of Challenger and Columbia, i.e., because we are afraid of making sacrifices. I think we have become so accustomed to instant gratification that we no longer want to invest the time to learn or build anything, especially if it takes years of study and long hours. More funding to NASA is not the answer: using NASA's feats of engineering (strictly speaking, it's not science that put man in space) as a means of inspiring more kids to go into science -- without fixing the underlying deficiencies in our education system -- is an expensive proposition. We need to acknowledge science in our lives and conscientiously use more science in our thought process, and stop being proud of our illiteracy in math, laws of physics, and anything that requires logical reasoning.

OK, not to belabor the point, but to put this in terms so that you may be able to understand how egregious the opening Albireo segment is (because you are so clearly a music fan) : it was analogous to going to a concert, telling me it was in the Rose Bowl when it was actually in your neighbor’s living room, and then trying to convey the beauty of the music by describing the seat cushions. I just think you can do better than that. Done venting.

As a long time devoted fan of beautiful Albireo (and a regular RadioLab podcast listener) I have to say: Sweet jeebers, Mr. Abumrad, but you butchered, and I mean absolutely butchered, the opening Albireo segment: its distance (~ 400 light years); the source of its beauty (a binary system that can be resolved with a telescope to reveal a dramatic color contrast in the components due to wide temperature differences and all the cosmic implications of that) which you never even mentioned; your "shiny object" fascination with a laser pointer that is immaterial to the beauty of Albireo. Yuk. YUK! Thumbs way, way, way down.

around 9:16ish there is a major gap in the story "I hear this wonderful voice on the other line and he say....." Cut to "I get back to the hotel room and I find this message and he says annie called"--- It is killing me! what did I miss!

I think there is a an odd cut at 9:18. Ann Druyan is telling the story of how she and Carl Sagen fell in love. And the story goes from leaving a voice mail for Carl, to being engaged. Kind of a Large leap. Wondering of the podcast is corrupted?

There is a bit of confusion around the 26 min mark where the definition of "the Universe" is concerned. The way Jad describes it he is saying that everything beyond space is the universe hence the lack of center. But I've never encountered such a definition. As I understand it the universe is the totality of the space we are in. So when people talk of "multi-verses" they refer to other spaces in the great unknown in which our space exists.The other assumption of which i too have always had is that outside of what we call "space" may have no space (could be like a solid) and that could be true but I think we are clinging to the old name we have given it "space" and therefore assume that it is a bubble punched into something. A something we have no idea of. It's a nice theory to work with but is just a theory. There is nothing to suggest that it isn't like a balloon but that the interior and exterior are different.The one thing we do know is that the exterior is different enough to allow for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Science keeps going on about dark energy but if I create an explosion deep underwater versus an explosion in space there will be a drastic difference in the shock wave that is similar to our universe. Rather than the energy within it is the surrounding forces that have more to do with the expansion.

The likelihood of anyone reading this is the same as The Golden Record's, but I thought I'd do it anyway -- so moved am I by the relevant material.

I just got finished watching "Cosmos" for the first time & have ow been picking up ancilliary stuff here & there on the InterNet. I wanted to know more about The Golden Record. Hard to believe while it's cold & gray outside, I'm just lounging on my couch, buying Carl & Ann's book "Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors", while looking at TGR's wiki that has an external link for "RadioLab", a search of which for DRUYAN bought me here & as I'm typing this downloading the RL interview, all on my iPad 2 ....

if the universe is big that means that there should be many intelligent civilizations sending many Voyagers. this means that it may be likely that one of those Voyagers will end of on one of those civilizations.

Hi Omar! I'm almost 29 - and I was so young at the time (4) that I don't remember it. I think I was obsessed with Rainbow Brite at the time... I assume that's why it was included - I'd never heard it. For years I thought I remembered it - and in college realized that what I remembered was not the actual event, but a 5 yr memorial/remembrance thing at my elementary school! I didn't watch the news at 4 OR 9, so how was I to know?

Hydrogen; Oxygen; Carbon; Nitrogen: the Universe is in us? Not even a sound-bite about Dark Matter being inside us too? Keep inside almost everyone's Comfort Zone--and never approach the thresh hold of wonder or mystery. Ironically, such frivolous "explorations" as yours make great entertainment for young minds on holiday weekends; but actually DO keep us at the Center of the Universe--only without having to acknowledge the dangerous responsibilities that come with having our Front-Row-Center seat. Yet it's precisely here where Carl Sagan's "Hope for a Pale Blue Dot" comes to mind....

I was a little dissapointed with the choice to replay the Challenger explosion transmissions in this episode.

I can usually deal with most of the "graphic" stuff on the show (including surgically inserting electrodes into iguana brains or smothering cowbirds with your bare hands), but I thought the drawn-out launch countdown that then painfully continued into the explosion was a bit gratuitous.

I understand that the intent was to have the listener somehow feel the full effect of the accident and how it changed America's attitude towards the space program. I am just not sure that that's what is accomplished. It shocked me for a moment and I had to rewind the show to hear what I missed while I was thinking about my disappointment.

In my opinion, it might have been more powerful to have just had silence while the listener ran the event through their mind or to have cut out of the recording just before the explosion into sound. It just seemed obvious and cold.

I LOVE the show and I will post 3 positive comments to balance this one out. Thanks again!